We propose a systematic
modeling of the nonholonomic mobile manipulators built from a robotic
arm mounted on a wheeled mobile platform. We use the models derived to
generalize the standard definition of manipulability to the case of mobile
manipulators. The effects of mounting a robotic arm on a nonholonomic
platform are shown through the analysis of the manipulability thus defined.
Several applications are evoked, particularly applications to control.
The optimization of criteria inherited from manipulability considerations
are given to generate the controls of our system when its end effector
motion is imposed.

Example
Two: Manipulability ellipsoids for a planar mobile manipulator
built from a car-like platform and a 2-rotoid joint planar robotic
arm (front wheel parallel to the longitudinal axis of the platform)
: contribution of the mobile platform to the mobile manipulator manipulability.
(0.6 MB)

3

Example
Three: Manipulability ellipsoids for a planar mobile manipulator
built from a car-like platform and a 2-rotoid joint planar robotic
arm (front wheel orthogonal to the longitudinal axis of the platform)
: effects of the nonholonomic constraints on manipulability.
(0.5 MB)

4

Example
Four: Tracking an operational motion with elliptic path minimizing
the eccentricity of the ellipsoids of manipulability. (1.3 MB)

5

Example
Five: 3-dimensional plot of the path followed by the point with
coordinates (qa1, qa2) on the w5 surface (this corresponds to the
animation mpg_h2_optim_w5.mpg) . (0.2 MB)

6

Example
Six: Tracking an operational motion maximizing a convex
combination of the manipulability measures of the robotic arm and
the mobile manipulator. (1.0 MB)